Grammar Help

[Cynful]

My ds13 has quite a few different ld's, including dyslexia and processing issues. We are having a hard time with grammar. He's done PLL and did pretty good with it but I'm wanting him to get a little more grammar than that now. I thought Rod & Staff English 4 would be good for him, but after only 5 lessons, he's lost. So I'm thinking maybe Easy Grammar would be good for him. I'm just not sure what level to put him in. He really needs to start with the very basics and only work on one thing at a time. Should I go all the way back to 3 or 4 or maybe start at 5? Any other suggestions are welcome too.

[rafiki]

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[Dobela]

Have you looked at Winston Grammar? The pages are very clean, lot's of white space around each sentence to mark, and the cards make grammar very clear.

:iagree: Winston Grammar is amazing! My son has been doing it this year and has learned more from it than he did the years before. It also isn't very expensive compared to other programs.

[Miss Sherry]

I second Winston Grammar. Using the cards that are part of the program seems to help with remembering the information. I suppose the cards help to remember the information because of the activity of laying them out (doing something physical can help with memory ) and there is information on the cards that let's the student have a very brief review of the information over and over in a way that is not to tiresome.

I like to use Daily Grams - which is very brief and easy to use - along with Winston Grammar , to cover capitalization and punctuation. It can be used in only a few minutes at a time.

I am also using Easy Grammar to go over a few things with my daughter, if she is needing extra work on particular parts of speech. I am not using the entire program - my core program is Winston Grammar - but only picking out a few worksheets as needed. This can be found very inexpensively sometimes on the used boards here.

 

I think I would suggest starting out with just Winston Grammar and then if you feel it is needed , add in the other items once you have an opportunity to get used to the format of Winston Grammar. :001_smile:

[siloam]

My ds13 has quite a few different ld's, including dyslexia and processing issues. We are having a hard time with grammar. He's done PLL and did pretty good with it but I'm wanting him to get a little more grammar than that now. I thought Rod & Staff English 4 would be good for him, but after only 5 lessons, he's lost. So I'm thinking maybe Easy Grammar would be good for him. I'm just not sure what level to put him in. He really needs to start with the very basics and only work on one thing at a time. Should I go all the way back to 3 or 4 or maybe start at 5? Any other suggestions are welcome too.

Junior Analytical Grammar and Analytical Grammar use a similar unusual sequence as EG, but they don't have the memorization that EG has.

 

Why it works here:

 

Unusual sequence

Mastery based, but continues to use the previously learned material

It focuses on big ideas and them moves to details. In some areas they never go to the detail of other programs.

 

Modifications I make:

 

Do half a lesson a day

Both my girls repeated JAG to really own it, but then did fine with AG season 1 without repeating, but my oldest did repeat season 2.

 

Personally I am such a sequential learner that in school I always got stuck on finding the subject and predicate first. Never thought to eliminate other parts of speech. The only way I passed my senior English course was by reading Roots for extra credit.

 

JAG was the first time I ever got grammar, and much of it has to do with the sequence: Nouns, articles, adjectives, pronouns, prepositions & phrases, Predicate, Subject, direct object, indirect object, linking verbs, predicate nominative, predicate adjective.

 

Note with this sequence you don't worry about what type of nouns they are for parsing, your immediate goal is to get to the subject and verb, you figure out what function the nouns serve later when the whole sentence is parsed. Also note that with this sequence you identify pronouns functioning as adjectives before you even look for pronouns, so there should be no confusion.

 

Now I did at first consider adding the Winston Cards to the program, but in the end neither of my oldest two have needed it. It has been clear enough to them without. That said I did make them cards that have all the cues used to find things, all the pronouns listed, and examples of all the diagramming and I put them on a ring in order so they can use the cards as a guide whenever needed. Here is a picture of my set. The pink section is the basic definitions, the blue is diagramming and the green is AG season 2 work. But honestly I use the cards a lot more than either of my girls do. :glare: (No life is not fair.)

 

Heather